Milwaukee, WI
Editorial: The military and the greens
_From the Journal Sentinel
Last Updated: March 12, 2003
Detail should be important to everyone in the military. Making sure
soldiers have enough bullets (or airmen enough missiles or sailors
enough shells) can obviously mean the difference between life and death,
victory and defeat. "For want of a nail" and all that.
So when Defense Department officials testify today on exemptions they
want from the nation's environmental laws, they can best make their case
by presenting detailed evidence of how those laws impinge on national
security and the military's ability to train its men and women. Because
right now, that evidence seems to be missing.
As we noted in January, there do seem to be individual cases in which
training is altered and becomes unrealistic because of environmental
rules. But in such cases, commanders already have the ability to ask the
president to grant exemptions.
The curious thing is that while Presidents Clinton and Bush both granted
exemptions to prevent the release of classified information, no
president has received a request for an exemption based on military
readiness concerns, according to testimony last year before the Senate
Committee on Environment and Public Works. If environmental laws do pose
problems for training, why have no commanders ever sought an exemption
on that basis?
This editorial can be viewed at:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/editorials/mar03/124833.asp
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